The incident was especially problematic for Sano, a 20-year-old Double-A third baseman ranked by Baseball America as the third-best prospect in all of baseball (two spots behind another Twins youngster, Byron Buxton, who we told you about here), because Twins General Manager Terry Ryan was in the stands last Tuesday when Sano rocked his controversial homer, which was his fourth in six games.

Here's video of the incident (Sano hits his homer around the 30 second mark):

Two things stand out in the footage: Sano's cocky bat-flip, and the sheer amount of time it takes him to get around the bases (nearly 30 seconds).

Some think a four-game benching for such relatively minor infractions is a little stiff, and while we don't know what was said behind closed doors (some reports indicate Sano didn't respond well to his initial benching, resulting in him riding the pine for a couple more games before he returned to the lineup yesterday), we're inclined to agree. After all, with the Twins' big league club once again mired toward the bottom of the MLB in team home runs, Terry Ryan should probably be absolutely overjoyed just to have a stud power-hitting prospect in the organization, bat-flips or no.

-- Follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter at @atrupar. Got a tip? Drop him a line at arupar@citypages.com.